


Fic: The Taste of Cigarettes

by burkesl17



Category: Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (Movie!Verse)
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-15
Updated: 2011-10-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 14:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burkesl17/pseuds/burkesl17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The door snapped open and Alex said, “Mrs Gibson...” He trailed off and stared at Peter for a moment, then straightened up and said, “Did I leave something at your flat?”</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic: The Taste of Cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

> I've called Peter's boyfriend Alex due to even IMBD being unable to provide me with his actual name, if anyone knows what it actually is please tell me! Thank you so much to [](http://takadainmate.livejournal.com/profile)[**takadainmate**](http://takadainmate.livejournal.com/) for a great and much appreciated, beta read!

Peter straightened his cuffs and brushed down his coat, telling himself he wasn't stalling, and re-read the address to make sure he had the right house one more time. The ink had run and he wiped his hand before pulling the door bell.

It seemed to take an age before he heard footsteps approaching and the door opened a crack. A middle age woman with lipstick bleeding into the lines at the corner of her mouth stared back at him and asked suspiciously, “Yes?”

“I know it's late, but I was hoping to see Alex?”

“Oh.” She relaxed a bit and pushed the door open. “He didn't mention anyone was coming over.”

“No I, I was in the area.”

“Hmm...” She moved off down the hall and he followed her inside. The house was dark with a lingering smell of boiled vegetables and damp, a TV was on somewhere with what sounded like a studio audience applauding hysterically.

“His lodgings are up on the third floor. You might want to remind him that I did want notice if people are going to be coming here at all hours, not that I mind, but I did say I want notice.”

“I'll remind him.”

She stared at him as he went up the stairs and he was glad when he reached the landing and was finally out of her sight. He hesitated again when he got to the door that separated off the lodgings. Downstairs, tinny music came from the TV. It sounded like a game show, the sort of thing Alex really hated.

It gave him the momentum to knock, and he quickly straightened his cuffs again as he heard Alex call, “Just be a minute.”

The door snapped open and Alex said, “Mrs Gibson...” He trailed off and stared at Peter for a moment, then straightened up and said, “Did I leave something at your flat?”

His question was an accusation and Peter had to swallow before saying, “No, no nothing. I just wanted to see you again, to talk. Can I come in?”

Alex looked at him, his face unreadable. His hair was damp, as though he'd recently washed it, and ruffled, like he'd only just pulled the jumper he was wearing over his head. Peter wanted to smooth down his hair and then trace his fingers around his ear, but he didn't move.

“Alright.”

He followed Alex into the room, it was just a garret, even tattier than the rest of the house. Alex flicked on a lamp but all it really did was show up the dirt on the windows.

Peter pulled out a chair but stopped at Alex's cold look.

“I know it's not much, but it's just until I get settled. As I did have to leave in rather a rush there wasn't much choice.” Alex rubbed his hands up and down his arms as though he was cold and snapped, “What do you want Peter?”

Peter opened his bag and took out Alex's key.

“I thought I might, I might bring you back this.”

Alex edged slightly closer, still wary, “Why?”

“Well I...” His palms were sweating again. “I also brought some gin, Gordon's. It's coming on half term isn't it? Thought you might need it with all the marking you'll be...”

“Peter.”

“Right. Yes. Right...” He looked around the room for a moment and then back at Alex, trying to find the right words, the best truth he could give.

“It was work. I think someone at work found out...about me.”

Alex stared at him and then opened the bottle pouring a healthy measure into a tumbler and adding a dash of soda. It took him a moment to speak as he watched Alex gulp the drink.

“That's always been a risk. It's a risk for me too. Do you think they'd let me teach if it got out I was a dirty queer? None of the parents would let me near their fucking little darlings.”

“I know.” Peter's hand was remarkably steady as he lit a cigarette, but he still fumbled it on the first try. “It's just, I can't tell you a lot about my work.”

“You can't tell me anything about your work.”

“Well, no.”

Alex picked up the lighter and turned it round in his fingers before lighting his own cigarette. Peter wanted to just get up, kiss the ashy taste out of his mouth, melt beneath him again. He just breathed smoke into his lungs instead.

“But I can, I shouldn't...The majority of what I do is like any other job I suppose. One goes into the office, reads reports, makes recommendations. Occasionally I go to see my subordinates in the field. Like thousands, millions, of other people in this city.”

For the first time since Peter had come into the room, Alex sat down. He made a small gesture with his cigarette and Peter managed to carry on.

“It doesn't always feel important. I get lost in the details I suppose. It doesn't always seem to add up to very much, but sometimes, sometimes it is important. Sometimes it's not just coincidences or reports or malicious gossip, sometimes it matters.”

Peter stubbed out his cigarette, so startled by speaking the truth that for a moment that he couldn't speak again.

“I had a brother, well I told you that.” He looked up as Alex spoke, turning the cigarette packet in his fingers before he let two drop out.

“My brother, you reminded me of him a bit when I first met you. He told us he was in the army - pack of lies - we knew he did the sort of work he wasn't allowed to talk about. He died in the war.”

Alex's hands were shaking as he lit another cigarette and Peter reached out to steady them without thinking. It was the first time he'd touched Alex's skin in nearly a month, it was soft and cool and dry. Their eyes locked and Alex went on softly, “My father, when I went up to Oxford, made me swear I'd never get involved with you boys and I didn't, until I met you anyway. Though I don't think that was quite how he meant.”

“You never told me.”

“All the things we've never told each other, Peter.” Alex pulled back and the loss of his touch hurt like a cold burn.

“True.” Peter looked down, at the creases on his trousers, the dirty carpet.

“It would scare me to death, you know. Every time you'd be away for a few nights, I'd know it wasn't really some boring conference and my imagination would do the rest. If you died out there, wherever there was, no one would come and tell me you were dead. No one even knew I existed. I'd never know what happened.

“And then you'd get back and for the first few nights you'd lie next to me, so stiff and cold. I'd have to coax you back to yourself. Back to me.”

Peter's eyes were blurring and he had to blink.

“I know. I'd feel you doing it and I couldn't even thank you.”

He still couldn't look at Alex, but he heard him pouring drinks and a glass was pushed into his hands.

Alex knelt in front of him and put his hands on Peter's knees, his face soft and so familiar, so loved.

“Why did you make me leave?”

Peter gulped the drink, bitter gin not cold enough but he liked the burn and he gasped, “I always told myself if I was found out I'd stand my ground, point out the pointlessness of blackmail now they knew, that I'd regard the service I've done our country as enough, show how I'd always done my duty.

“But I've been working on something, something so vital I couldn't be taken off it. Something more, something that made duty more important than love. I had to send you away because I couldn't give them any reason to get rid of me.”

Alex sighed and dipped his head. Peter reached across for the cigarettes, hand still not shaking but unable to get a steady grip.

“You could have told me.”

“No, no I couldn't. I can promise you the reason was good, but I can't ever tell you about it.”

He wanted to though. He wanted to tell Alex all about gorgeous, generous, dashing Bill Hayden who had still made their dirty little trade look heroic, and had so thoroughly and completely betrayed them all. Who he'd liked so much. Who he'd wanted to fuck about as much as he wanted to be, who had always been rumoured to have had boys as well as girls, but who everybody loved anyway. And who had gone into a prison and never walked out again.

Alex moved away from him and stood by the window, silhouetted by the street lights, stooped and tired.

“Are you saying you want me back?”

“Yes.” He was on his feet and across the room, moving quickly at last, putting his hands on Alex's shoulders, pushing his forehead into his neck.

“Yes, God I want you back.”

Alex took a deep shuddering breath. “I don't know if I can. The lives of people like us, us _inverts_ , are so hidden in so many bloody lies anyway I don't know if I can have them everywhere.”

They stood there for a moment until Peter backed away. He picked up his bag, and fingered the key on the table for a moment before leaving it there.

“You're right. I should leave here, be gone, walk out of your life. So you'll find someone else. Someone honest.”

He looked up at Alex who still hadn't turned to face him.

“But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go, but I'm going to leave the key, Which is against so many protocols I can't even list them all. But you can, you can keep it. In case you want to come back.”

He opened the door, practically ran down the stairs and ignoring the landlady and striding out into the night. The cold made him gasp and he walked briskly down the road, only looking up at the garret window once, in case it made him to linger.

***

It was two weeks later and Peter had only just got home from the office when he heard the turn of the lock. He didn't freeze, the habits were too ingrained, but he was too far from the cupboard to reach the pistol hidden in there in time, and dropped into a stance where he could do some damage if whoever it was didn't have firearms.

But it was Alex. Alex in his rumpled school teacher clothes, with his tired eyes and slightly hunched shoulders. Alex.

“I thought, well there's a boy moving schools and his Mum, who has a bit of a sweet spot for me I think - gave me this rather average whisky as a thank you present.”

Alex had a suitcase with him. A whole suitcase.

“And it might be rather average whisky, but even the worst of drinks can be improved by the company you drink them with. So I thought, thought you might fancy a nip. It's bitterly cold out, and this flat does have terrible drafts...”

He trailed off, looking awkward as Peter walked towards him and then he was touching Alex's cheek, running his hand along his jaw and into his hair, tipping his face up for a kiss.

“Wait,” Alex breathed, “You need to promise me something.”

Their lips were almost brushing, they were breathing against each other's mouths.

“Anything.”

Alex moved his hands to Peter's waist and he felt fingers pressing against his spine.

“If something like this happens again, just tell me I need to go. Don't make a big scene, just tell me to go and I will. If you ever tell me you don't love me, that you don't want us to be together any more I'll go, I'll be gone and I won't come back. You only ever do that if you want us to be over.”

“Then I'll never say that.”

Alex gasped and then they were kissing, messy, real and true. True and solid with no secrets or shadows, true as something solid, something that could be held and cherished and something that hurt.

Peter's head hit the floor, Alex tore his shirt and he surrendered under Alex, to everything Alex wanted to do to him, to everything Alex wanted done.

Afterwards, in bed, in messy sheets stained with whisky and fag ash, when he was completely curled around Alex, with his body hurting in intimate places, his head was pressed into that delicious place in the crook of Alex's shoulder he asked, “Why did you come back?”

Alex stretched for a moment. “Besides the fact that you're an incredible lay?”

Peter blushed and nudged him, “Besides that.”

“I realised I knew you, the essentials of you. There may be things I can never know, pieces of your life. But I get you like this, which is something better and richer. I suppose if you're a jigsaw I have all of the corners, the edges, the centre, I'm just missing a few inconsequential bits. The picture as a whole is beautiful and I'm the only one who gets to see this much of it.”

He squeezed Alex's side and whispered, “I love you.”

“Me too, Peter, me too.”

By now the shadows were long in the room, tinted orange from the street lights. It was deceptive light, the kind that made the darkness easier to hide in. But in all the shadows, all the lies, Peter thought he'd do anything to keep this one real, solid thing a bit longer.

THE END


End file.
